


Bells and Ravens

by hColleen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-22
Updated: 2014-03-22
Packaged: 2018-01-16 14:40:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1351153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hColleen/pseuds/hColleen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What did Loki see as he fell through time and space to reach the Chitauri? What did he experience? What epiphanies did he reach?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bells and Ravens

The bells rung in the old church, calling one to another, telling of the times when they were new, remembering the past seasons. The crows that remained when the trees were bare and snow lay deep on the ground added their stories, filling the air with mournful joy. Spring was still a long way off, fall a distant memory. Winter was reality and had been long enough to erase the memory of warmth and sunshine dappled through leaves on the forest floor. My steps crunch through the thin layer of ice that covers the snow, yesterday's almost-warmth teasing the upper layers into liquid before the night locked them into solid again, leaving behind deep scars that would linger until the next fall of snow.

Crows and bells, or maybe they were ravens and bells. I never bothered to learn the difference and they both remembered, haunted my memory. A poet called it tintinnabulation of the bells bells bells bells bells bells bells. A descent into madness with each repetition until the word loses meaning and becomes madness itself.

They're probably ravens. Ravens with their memory, with their nevermore and desolation. No, desolation belongs to crows.

What is the difference? I ask myself as I stand at the edge of the clearing, another thin dark shadow at the edge of the forest. They're both black birds with sharp beaks and raucous voices that pierce through time and eternity with little regard for anything left behind or anyone they cross and a great memory for those who cross them.

Brass. The church's bells are made of heavy brass. They had wanted iron, but the iron was too heavy and brass much easier to raise in the old tower. The beaters are iron, though. Iron against brass is an interesting sound. When you're close, you can hear them together, their notes pulsing through your body, beating against each other, just out of step.

Today, the bells will ring throughout the day. To remember, to forget, to drown out one misery with another. Were I a crow, a raven, I would fly beyond the reaches of those bells, beyond the reach of snow, beyond the reach of winter. Remember! Remember! Yet, they don't tell me in a language I can understand what I am to remember, what I am to forget.

The whole of the universe ripples around me, through me, telling me so much, if only I could remember, if only I could hear it above the beating, pulsing, tromping sounds that echo around me in the over-full silence.

Silence? There has never been silence, not with the bells, not with the ravens, not with the snow, not with the universe that echoes everything from one end to another and back, bouncing and throbbing, rolling over and over, each iteration just out of step with each other, pulsing, vibrating, marching through reality until it comes apart and all that is left is memory.

There never were crows. Crows are the lies that people tell because they don't want to acknowledge the ravens. Ravens remember. Bells remember. The poet knew. He was able to see, to hear, to feel the truth behind the lies of crows.

Why did I come here? Surely not for this. Surely not for ravens and bells. There was another reason. I step forward, leaving the forest for the clearing and the snow is much more packed, my footsteps becoming lost in the myriad that have gone before me. I am getting lost in the myriad.

I can never get lost in the myriad. I am the myriad. I feel them all echoing as their petty noises echo in the universe that beats and pulses within my body, within my skull. They need me. Of course they need me. I can understand everything, I am everything. They must be made to understand.

Madness. Of course this is madness. I can feel it in the depths of my bones that I am quite mad. I have been from the beginning, but the bells, the ravens, the bells ravens bells ravens

Nevermore.

I look up at the church tower. The bells are still swinging back and forth, back and forth. They won't stop. They'll never stop. The universe will not allow silence. Tintinnabulation. Oh, ring on bells! Tell the world what it can never understand, what it can never have. Tell the story of all of history, from beginning to end, from before the birth of the universe until the end of all time.

I can see it all, all of history, all of time, all of everything. It coils around, weaving between the beats of sound, between the vibrations of the universe. I know the sparrow's fall. I know the sparrows are a lie, too. Only ravens. Only bells. Only I am real and I can see all of reality, all of time, all of everything.

In the middle of the yard, between the ravens and the bells, I throw out my arms and scream to the sky, trying to hear myself over everything else.

Only, there is nothing else.

I fall endlessly, the beats and pulses of the universe keeping me alive, not letting me die as I should.

I land nowhere I have been before, no where I recognize. What had I been thinking? Where had I been?

Oh, this is nice. I grin to those who greet me as I push myself to my feet. "I am Loki," I start only to be stopped when one begins to attack. I knew he would. I can see how they will and who these are and what it will take for me to get back to where I belong.

I laugh as I kill those who would have killed me. Yes. I know.

**Author's Note:**

> Most people are familiar with Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven. The other poem mentioned is The Bells, also by Edgar Allen Poe. Both are thematically about a descent into madness, as are a lot of Poe's writings. Also inspired by listening to myNoise(dot)net's Beatae Memoriae and Winter Walk together.


End file.
